What could have happened to my zucchini plant?

Looks like I was dead wrong about the peat; not enough in there rather than too much! So much for experts ...

I lost one plant to borer last year and when you only have two Cut the crop considerably...This year four in a big wide row with lots of air circulation all around, and lots of fish and milk in the foliage watering to discourage badguys, fungal and bacterial...

I wouldn't hack it over a cracked stem, but get the collapsed foliage off the plant and monitor soil moisture. If it's borer you should see a hole with frass (chewings) around it (check Kisal's last link).

zucchini root borer

Sun May 24, 2009 12:46 pm

Here's a little more info re the root borers:

Squash vine borers cause a sudden wilting of the plant, and left untreated will kill the plant. They bore into the lower portions of the stem and eat their way through the stem tissue. A characteristic sawdust-like yellow frass around squash stems is a telltale sign that vine borers are present. Frass is what the vine borer leaves behind after digesting the stem tissue.

If caught early, the individual borers can be removed by carefully slitting the stem open with a knife," she said. "Moist soil should be mounded over leaf joints at higher points to encourage secondary root formation, since the borer's feeding has likely disrupted the main roots. A cultural way to control these pests is to remember to rotate crop location in the garden each year."http://urbanext.illinois.edu/news/news.cfm?NewsID=13477

So if it is the squash borer, you can usually find the hole, down in the bottom part of the stem.

Here's a little more info:

Question: I have planted zucchini and the plants are beautiful and flowering like mad but now that the zucchini is coming on it is starting to die from some kind of worm coming up through the root and it is killing the plants. What can I do to rid my garden of these destructive worms?

Answer: Sounds like you have Squash Vine Borers. In the larvae or caterpillar stage, they are white with a dark head. They hatch from eggs laid in the soil by wasp-like moths, and then tunnel into stalks and leaf stems to feed. ... In some cases, vigorous plants are able to survive the attack if the borer population is limited, but unfortunately, this is seldom the case.

Here are a number of organic methods for controlling them in the garden:

Trying to save infested plants:Carefully slit open infested stems and remove the borer with a tweezers, and pack dirt around the slit.Use a medicine dropper to inject infested vines with parasitic nematodes.At the first sign of trouble, cut out and destroy infected stems or whole plants to reduce spreading.

To control them in the garden:Interplant garlic and onion with zucchini.Release trichogramma (tiny wasps used for biological control) to attack borer eggs in soil.Use pheromone traps for adult moths.Use the proper variety of parasitic nematode as mulch around plants.Cover vines with floating row covers early in the season (you'll need to hand-pollinate). Plant early or very late to avoid the main egg-laying season.Plant borer tolerant cultivars.Clean up debris around the garden in the fall to reduce areas where they can overwinter.http://www.thriftyfun.com/tf16803587.tip.html

The Helpful Gardener

I have so much to learn! I know I've made all sorts of mistakes, but figured I'd learn a bit each year, and get better. So, I don't have enough peat in my mix? What is an ideal mix?

I gave up on my plant . It was looking worse and worse. My 2 out in the garden though are flowering and looking great, so I hope they do well. I had forgotten that the sick plant was one the the stem almost broke in half about a month ago. I thought at that point I would loose it, but I stuck a bandaid on it, and it kept growing. Maybe the weak stem let in a disease or something? Maybe it had nothing at all to do with the broken stem. I had forgotten all about it because when I transplanted it I had hilled the soil up higher than the bandaid, so it wasen't visable anymore.

I have looked at those links that Kisal posted, but am still confused about what my plants problem was. Some of the pictures looked almost exactly the same to me. I hope with time I'll learn to identify problems easier so I can come up with a solution before loosing too many plants. I'm guessing a lot of it just comes with experience? I'm so so new to all this. I'm feeling quite good though about how things are going except for that zucchini. My kids got to eat the first 2 ripe strawberries today! They thought that was a HUGE treat! Luckily I was allowed a small bite! Mmmmm SOOOOOO sweet! We also have some lovely peas that will be ready to eat soon! We have so many more things growing this year, it can't all fail!

Rainbowgardener

Mon May 25, 2009 3:01 am

Thank you so much for all that information. I really have a lot to learn. I gave up on this plant though because it was just looking worse and worse. I don't think there was any chance of it coming back. The parts that weren't completely wilted before were by yesterday. When I took it out I cut open the stem to see if I could find anything, but I didn't see any bugs. I'm still quite confused as to what happened, but have been reading the information posted on here and it has been helpful. Could bacterial wilt come on as quickly? I'm thinking maybe this was what it was. That plants stem had been injured about a month ago and I had put a bandaid on it. Maybe it had something to do with that? I really don't know, but hope my other 2 zucchini plants continue to thrive.

Thanks again for taking the time to give me all that information. I feel badly that I wasen't able to use it to save my plant .

For containers you might want to skip on the garden soil completely, but I add some to most any soil I make as it is a fine biological catalyst (providing native soil flora and fauna) But no more than one to ten and likely less than that.

Compost is always great but unless I have some store-bought (farm-bought in my case) then I won't, as my compost heap under the pine tree won't get hot enough to kill weed seed or pathogenic badguys, so I mostly use mine as mulch. Screening in half-post like mine won't hurt, but again no more than one to ten. If you have good finished compost I might go a lot more, like three to ten or even more if it's really nice...Leaf duff is great; that layer you find under the old dried leaves that is just starting to break down is perfect fungal food (No more than one to ten) I usually topdress the container with my "compost" to add more biologies from there and to help keep the soil from drying out with a readily permeable layer

Composted cow manure is another heavy mix, so 1 to 10 tops, but it adds a lot to the mix as far as biology. This is more critical if you are not using a good compost. Other manure byproducts don't go through four stomachs; cow manure is finished in a way unlike other manure products, so best for food use (not that I am strictly that picky; the manure sources in the compost in my veggie beds are many and varied, and include cow).

So where does our bulk come from? For years the "best" choice has been peat, and at least half my container mix up until recently was peat, but I have switched to coconut coir and love it. I can store plenty of the compressed bricks for a long time in a small space, I no longer have the pH issue to deal with (peat is acidic), it does not have the drought and deluge nature of peat (while peat can hold slightly more water, it becomes water exclusionary when it dires out, and in a high quantity it can make the surface of the pot a water-proof barrier when it parches out. Coir is less water retentive, but the flip side is that it never becomes water repellent, a HUGE plus in my mind. Add a neutral pH, and the fact that we are now using an under-utilized waste stream, rather than mining irreplaceable ecosystem, and coir is simply the right choice...